In the parlance of mechanical player-pianos, "hand-played" described a piano roll that was directly derived from a realtime human performance. After the initial punching of a roll, it could be retouched. Alternatively, a roll could be prepared entirely by a technician punching holes in a paper roll, measuring physical distances on paper to make the rhythm -- no piano playing required. Conlon Nancarrow carried that practice to considerable … [Read more...]

Bruce Brubaker

I'm Bruce Brubaker -- not Bruce Wayne! And yet, while I chair the piano department at America's oldest institution of professional musical training, New England Conservatory in Boston, increasingly technology turns my professional piano playing life into a kind of "caped crusade." Read More…

PianoMorphosis

Music is changing. Society's changing. Pianists, and piano music, and piano playing are changing too. That's PianoMorphosis. But we're not only reacting...
From the piano -- at the piano, around the piano -- we are agents of change. We affect … [Read More...]